Man what a fun Pokémon romhack, so much charm and love to Vinesauce and the streamers alike, chalk-full of references jokes and callbacks from the history of Vinesauce.

But, Holy FUCK was this a surprisingly difficult game, some of the most difficult Pokémon experience I've played. Granted, it was a needed change of pace since pokemon is a fairly easy game to grasp, but with all of the additional moves, abilities, items, etc. added, it makes the game more frustrating than fun, especially the latter half were you can easily get sweeped by.

Sometimes, a fan-made game can manage to outshine the games that inspired it, and in many respects, Vinemon: Sauce Edition does just that. Being a game made by the Vinesauce community, it's filled with love, reverence, and references to the longtime streamer and friends. The Vinemon designs range from being specifically Vinesauce or video game-related, incredibly creative, and seeming like they came straight out of an official Pokemon game. The plot, despite seeming straightforward at first, ends up taking many twists and turns, with cameos and running gags throughout. There's a glut of both hilarious bits and awesome moments, with some unique trainers even having special mechanics to their fights that make them stick out that much more. The battle AI is much smarter than that of official Pokemon games, with Trainers using advanced strategies, actively switching out Vinemon, and having diverse teams that can serve to increase the challenge of the game, if that's your thing. The beautifully crafted sprites and lovingly composed music match, and even occasionally exceed, those of the official Pokemon games, and serve to enhance the experience. With hours of side content based around games and running gags of the Vinesauce community, you'll still have plenty to do in this game, even after finishing the main story.

Unfortunately, I do have some gripes with the game. While the difficulty compared to Pokemon games can be welcome, it does come in the form of sudden difficulty spikes (the 2nd Gym Leader in particular is much harder than anything before him), certain unique trainers' abilities being able to one-shot you with no way to defend against it, and enemies having stats that seem far higher than their levels would suggest, resulting in enemies that are 10-20 levels below me still one-to-two-shotting me. While the amount and variety of sidequests are great, some of them have unclear objectives or go on for a bit too long. While this isn't an issue for me, the fact that this is specifically a Vinesauce-themed game means that it could potentially alienate anyone not familiar with that community, and some of the references within the game can be incredibly deep cuts, to the point that even some longtime fans will be lost by them. Finally, I'm personally not a fan of how the EXP Share used is the classic style rather than the more recent post-X/Y version, resulting in a lot of grinding (especially early on) for a full team (though the game is kind enough to include multiple EXP Shares to give to your whole team). While the game is still overall very good, these are just some things to keep in mind as of the time of writing, as Swone Vial (the team responsible for this game) are actively patching it, so some of these issues may end up being rectified in later releases. Overall, I'd highly recommend this game to any Pokemon fan; just keep my criticisms in mind.

The last 6 years of this game being in development were definitely not put to waste - this fan game is really goddamn good. The mon selection is really diverse and interesting (so many of them are actual viable mons), the new mechanics are interesting and engaging, the music is fantastic (there's a legendary theme that feels like it was written for me), there are some absolute banger special areas (not spoiling them in this review you'll have to play the game yourself for them), and the writing inspires joy. Even if you don't know Vinesauce lore you'll probably still enjoy this, I think.